Ralf Hemmecke wrote:
>
> On 10/16/2014 03:28 PM, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
> > OTOH GPL causes inconvenice (some reasonable things are forbidden by
> > GPL). At least for now BSD looks like better choice.
>
> Maybe BSD looks better for you, but what exactly is your fear with GPL?
> What are thoses "reasonable things"?
Few examples:
1) Distributing binary + a patch without full sorces. Or just
"courtesy binary" for some archtecture. This is reasonable to
save space in particular if original is widely available. GPL
requres to keep sorces for download on the server...
2) One may wish to embed encryption key for classical cryptography
inside executable, distribute this executable to others so that
they can send enctypted messages to him. This is not very
secure but give some protection and may be best thing available
if public key cryptography is not an option. However, GPL
requires souces (with no obfuscation!), so extracting encryption
key becomes trivial.
3) There are GPL incompatible free licences. Creating and
distributing combined programs is reasonable, but forbidden
if licences are incompatible
>
> >> The GPL license of fricasmath.sty does not have any impact
> >> whatsoever on the rest of the FriCAS code.
>
> > One thing is that putting GPL fragment inside a file in a driectory
> > when every other file uses BSD licence is misleading
>
> For this very reason the FSF suggests to put a license notice into every
> single file (which FriCAS has if I am not wrong).
Actually most files include licence, but this is confusing because
licence is at the end (so may be easily overlooked, as normal
practice is to put licencing clauses at the beginning). Some
file (mostly that I wrote) rely on general licence statement.
IMO licence at the end is good to satisfy the letter ("do not
remove copyright notes") but are almost useless for the purpose.
Licence text at the begining IMHO adds too much clutter to
sources so I prefer to omit it.
>
> I actually find it rather ignorant if some people ignore those license
> issues and just carelessly take whatever they can get on the Internet
> and publish it as their own. So I don't support careless people.
I do not know how careful you are. I believe that normal folks
given clear statement of licence do not scan file looking for
another licence in the middle which gives different terms.
> > Second, impact is much wider than you wrote. AFAIU current legal
> > theory is that result of running TeX on a file including your style
> > file is derived work, so subject to GPL. Given that the style file
> > is needed to use TeX output from FriCAS, this would mean that
> > including FriCAS output in a paper makes the paper GPL.
>
> Come on. TeX is a programming language. The text of the paper is data.
> Where in the GPL is written that the program under GPL makes the data
> GPL? Are you distributing your pictures that you produced by GIMP under GPL?
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatCaseIsOutputGPL
>
> I don't see that fricasmath.sty copies anything of it's program into the
> pdf or dvi file.
Well, TeX file is a _program_ which prescribes content and
(partially) appearence to the text. TeX macros are programs
which are combined with user part and then "compiled" together
to produce final results. In particular layout is largely
affected by macros. Today you may say that fricasmath.sty
is too small to matter and copyright claim other it would
be probably dismissed. But before it is dismissed a person
or small company may get bankrupt (in SCO vs. IBM the _real_
thing SCO had was of size fricasmath.sty)
>
> If you fear GPL, then I hope you have not (by accident) used any of those
>
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/preview
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/hyperlatex
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/python
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/eqnarray
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/program
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/dot2texi
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/units
> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/classicthesis/
>
Well, (La)TeX licensing is a mess. For one, old standard licence
of LaTeX packages is GPL incompatible (apparently they try to
make new licence GPL compatible, but I suspect that they still
carry packages with old licence), but IIRC typical binary
contains GPL-ed parts. Since I not in business of distributing
LaTeX binaries I do not make much fuss about this (for the GPL parts
I know one can reasonably claim that copyright status of output
is not affected by them).
For FriCAS I would like to avoid such mess. LaTeX got popular
in times when people had much looser approach to copyright.
But nowaday law is more restritive and in general stakes
are higher than in the past, so project which is too loose
in it copyright treatment has almost no chance to became
popular.
> PS: Maybe I should think about the license of both files fricas.sty and
> fricasmath.sty. What's your opinion about LPPL 1.3+ ?
They seem to care a lot about this "Current Maintainer" business,
which I am not sure if it gives them more than just saying that
modified copy has to clearly state that is modified.
In general it looks OK. The old licence required that
modifcation be distributed under different name (which
AFAICS incompatible with GPL and may cause practical
problems), but the new one apparently dropped this
requirement.
I must say that I would prefer to keep licencing simple, so
that we can concentrate on real work. And the simplest case
would be to have single licence for everything. But except
for adding new licence to the pack LPPL 1.3+ looks OK.
--
Waldek Hebisch
[email protected]
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